


Truest Love

by strikeyourcolors



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Kissing, M/M, Magic, Terminal Illnesses, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 04:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9217928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikeyourcolors/pseuds/strikeyourcolors
Summary: (Fairytale AU) A Lazarus potion brought Jason back to life, but he didn't break its curse. Only truest love will stay death's hand...but time is running out. Who, or what, is Jason's truest love and will help come in time to save him again?Of course not. Jason's never been lucky or loved, has he?





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fairy-tale inspired AU that admittedly feels more like a sequel than it should. None of the romantic relationships are particularly explicit, but hopefully I still managed to convey the love. 
> 
> ...also it's only after I write this that I realize it sounds a little bit like Frozen. Sorry about that.

“It is the curse, my lord,” Timothy Drake said solemnly. The young mage had come instantly at Bruce's summons, nearly as concerned for Bruce's son as Bruce himself was. 

“Impossible,” Bruce answered. “The curse was broken. He's alive, isn't he? The Lazarus Potion cured him. It brought him back to life.” 

Tim sympathized with Bruce. Gazing at Jason's shivering, unconscious form, he wanted Lord Wayne's words to be true. A street child who had stolen and starved and begged, adopted by the one of the wealthiest lords in the kingdom. Tim very much wanted his story to have a happy ending, and he had since he first met Jason Todd years ago. Jason hadn't deserved the death the psychopathic warlock on the road dealt out to him and he certainly hadn't deserved the curse of the Lazarus Potion. 

_Life it gives, but only borrowed. Make haste with time lest it be shadowed. Be wise and heeding to this command. Only truest love will stay death's hand._ Truest love, Timothy had thought, was bringing Jason back to life. It had been the final step in healing Bruce's broken heart. What spoke of true love more than that?

Jason had been as vivacious as before. Always in to trouble, perhaps a bit angrier, but it had seemed he was happy. Lord Wayne was happy, his elder ward and younger blood son had been happy. So much happiness, until Jason seemed to catch a summer cold. As strong and as healthy as he was, the healers of the castle had promised it would pass quickly and Jason would soon once again be training with his weapons and riding off on his adventures. 

It had not passed quickly. Jason had grown weaker by the day and, at last, Lord Wayne had summoned one of the most talented mages in the land to see to his son. They had formed a relationship after Jason's death, when Bruce's fractured heart had threatened to cause war across their kingdom. Tim was only too happy to help restore his son to life and follow up with Jason. 

Happy again. Tim was not happy now. “An act of truest love,” Tim told Bruce. “That is his only chance. Perhaps he was getting married? Perhaps he had a lover?”

Bruce shook his head. Bruce had had plans for Jason before his death. Plans of getting him knighted, plans of having him serve the kingdom as nobly and honorably as Bruce himself had. Plans of getting him land of his own. Damian would inherit all that was Bruce's, but Bruce would see his adopted child or any of his wards go wanting. Dick Grayson had chosen a life on the road, but he still had a wife and a comfortable home to go back to. Bruce would have known if Jason had marriage plans, or even a love interest. 

Jason turned on his side, coughing hard enough that Tim could only grimace, laying a hand on his ribs to try to ease the ache that was no doubt forming there. His blue-green eyes fluttered open and he looked between his friend and his foster-father. “Not good?” He asked. 

“Who is your truest love?” Bruce questioned instead of answering. Tim knew that look of near desperation in his eyes.

“The curse,” Tim explained to Jason. “The Lazarus Curse was not broken when you were resurrected.”

“Oh,” Jason said, closing his eyes and taking a few more breaths, eased by Tim's healing spell over his ribs. “I don't know. If we're talking mutual truest love then that cat in the stables really likes me. I feed her all the pieces of fish I don't want.” 

Bruce wasn't amused. Tim took the opportunity to make a graceful, quiet exit. 

\---

Jason knew he was dying. He knew it earlier than anyone in the household did, probably. You don't just get brought back from the dead for no cost, and as much as it hurt that had definitely not paid the piper. Or the grim reaper. He hoped to die decently and quickly but Bruce seemed determined that was not going to happen. 

At Jason's refusal to name any truest love, Bruce had seemed to go with quantity of love over quality. He sent the word out to anyone Jason had shown an interest in or even had briefly met, as far as Jason could tell. Some of the names on the list Bruce offered him weren't names he recognized. It was humiliating, to lie in a sick bed and to have everyone know he needed a true love to save him and his father was begging people he'd met at a party once ten years ago. 

Worse yet, Bruce called on a favor from Damian's mother. Talia al Ghul was beautiful, there would never be any denying that, but Jason knew she was treacherous. She had been the one to provide the Lazarus Potion to Bruce in the first place, never hinting that she might be damning Jason to an even more painful death. 

She could not help with truest love. Of course she couldn't. It was clear from the way that her son followed her around that he adored her and she showed him only the barest of attentions. He had no doubt Talia loved her son. She loved the tie he created with Bruce. She loved the pieces of herself she could see in him. But she had no true love for Damian and that made Jason a little soft toward the blood son who would have everything in Bruce's land. But she knew another spell. A spell of Stasis. 

“It will not heal him, Beloved,” Talia told Bruce as they sat very domestically having tea. Jason ignored the way his hands were shaking on the cup and for a moment he thought Talia might be on his side. “All it will do is hold him this way and slow the progression of the curse. “

“Slowing it is giving us more time to find an answer,” Bruce replied firmly. “I want you to cast it on my land.” 

“No! Bruce!” Jason argued, surging out of the chair so suddenly the tea splashed over his hand and onto his leg. “We've had time. Let this go. Let me go.” 

“Beloved, I can not cast it over so wide an area. I could not even encompass your entire castle and the most vast the area, the weaker the spell grows.” She frowned, reaching to brush dark locks out of the eyes of the lord of the castle. “I should not have offered.” 

“His room, then,” Bruce decided. Jason grabbed for him, his lungs seizing as he bent the wrong way. He coughed until his eyes watered, until his lips felt cold and he thought that death might be better than this. Bruce knelt by him, rubbing his back until he could catch his breath, but his eyes stayed on Talia. “Do it now.” 

Talia did it. Jason should have known Bruce would never respect his wishes in the matter. Bruce was a good man, and Bruce had taken good care of him, but Bruce was stubborn. Bruce laid plans and stuck to them no matter what. Talia cast the spell of Stasis and Jason was left a prisoner in his own room. 

Grudgingly, Jason admitted it gave him time to see friends who normally would not have arrived in time. Roy Harper came first, no doubt since he was closest both in location and to Jason's affections. 

They had briefly had a love affair, and Jason felt maybe a tiny spark of hope that Roy was still his truest love. 

“I bring news from the outside world,” Roy announced joyously upon his arrival, making light of Jason's imprisonment. “Those terrible leather jerkins you adore have become all the rage among the knights of the court. They've begun to dye them in festive colors, though no one can quite replicate the crimson one you have.” 

“Because it was dyed with the blood of my enemies,” Jason answered casually. “They're not terrible, either. Mine saved my life more times than I can count. You remember when I almost took that arrow because you fell asleep on watch?”

“You smelled like a wet, dead cow whenever it rained,” Roy said fondly. 

“That didn't stop the princess from swooning all over me when we rescued her,” Jason replied with a smirk that almost made him seem healthy. “You can't even get the girl when I smell like a barnyard.” 

Roy could have any girl. He knew that. And not just because he was the adopted son of a wealthy lord, the same as Jason. “Maybe,” He suggested. “The princess is your truest love.”

Jason snorted. “She's married and has like four kids by now. I'll pass, even if she is. Thanks all the same.” 

Roy leaned forward, curling his leg up under him on the rug they were sitting on. They had toasted their dinner in the fireplace in lieu of a campfire, reminiscing about old times. Times that would never be had again, Jason knew. “What about me?” He asked. 

“What about you?” Jason asked, ignoring the way his heart fluttered in his chest. 

Roy kissed him. It was as sweet as he remembered. Fire and passion and they simply connected so well that not very long ago Jason could have imagined spending his life with Roy, riding off to the next adventure. The kiss was good. 

But it wasn't magical. 

Roy pulled away and watched him. There were no sparks. No wash of relief through his aching body. Everything felt the same as it had moments before. 

“Damn,” Roy swore. “I was hoping that would be it.” 

Jason was hoping so as well. It wasn't like he wanted to die again. But he shook his head and managed a smile at his friend. At his love who was not his truest love. “Don't worry about it. Do you want to toast some pumpkin seeds?”

\---

Kori was next. A dread pirate known as the Starfire, she had to be smuggled into the castle in the dead of night. He had been spent three months as her captive, officially, but during only two days of his captivity had he not wanted to be with her. Their relationship had been brief and bright like her namesake and he still counted her among his most trustworthy companions. 

His room troubled her. The spell of Stasis made her skin crawl. “Things must change,” She told Jason as he lay with his head pillowed on her breast. They had fallen into bed rather quickly, despite his ill health, because that was what they always had done. Beyond that, she was warm. Jason had felt chilled for the last weak but lying with her in bed, he suddenly didn't feel like he was already halfway laid to rest in the cold ground. 

He hoped Bruce burned his body, this time.

“And so things changed,” Jason agreed. “You're the captain of your own ship now, aren't you? I'd love to see it some time.” 

“Perhaps you will,” Kori replied, fingers stroking through his hair. Of course they knew he wouldn't. They had continued with their liaison tonight even without any sign of the curse being lifted because Jason loved her and she loved him, and there wouldn't be another chance to express that. 

“I shall compose a song in your honor,” Kori told him as she dressed to leave the next morning. “The bawdiest, bloodiest song you can imagine. My men will blush when I force them to sing it.” 

Jason thought he would like to be immortalized in such a way. There were precious few ways he could make pirates uncomfortable any longer. “Have a copy of the lyrics sent to me,” He requested. “I'll have it added to the library.” Or sung at his funeral. 

\---

Others came and went, most by Bruce's orders. Jason had tried to bolt from his room on quite a few occasions only to be held back by the spell. It was as though he was on a tether that snapped him back. On the nights when the pain was the worst he contemplated hurling himself from the window to see if that would break the spell holding him to this room.

There was the servant girl that Jason had lost his virginity to. There was the blacksmith's assistant that Jason had never wanted to see again after how poorly their affair had ended. Bruce, it seemed, knew a freakish amount about his love life. Tied to his chambers as he was, Jason couldn't find Bruce to yell at him. Every time he visited it became an argument where Jason insisted he be allowed to die with some dignity and Bruce staunchly told him they had more time. 

Timothy visited regularly. “Maybe,” He said as they played cards. Jason's head ached too much for chess. “We are going about this the wrong way. Truest love is what the curse says. It doesn't specify the type of truest love. Who says it has to be romantic?”

Jason didn't want to admit how few people loved him, and how little the love not having to come from a romantic partner actually broadened his horizons. It still broadened them. 

“Maybe it's not even a person,” Tim added. “You could have truest love for an object, admittedly shallow as that would be. Truest love could come from an action.”

“You could take the spell off this room,” Jason suggested. “I would absolutely love that.” 

He almost regretted suggesting it with the sad look on Tim's face. “I would if I could,” He assured him. “But I don't know Talia's magic. She didn't allow any loopholes where another mage could remove it.” Clever of her, but Tim silently cursed her name. He had tried to convince Bruce that keeping Jason prisoner was the worst idea. As much as it pained him to think about, Jason should have died over a month ago. It wouldn't have been pretty, but it would have been relatively swift. 

He ignored how slowly Jason moved and how he missed even the most obvious hands as they played cards. He was a shadow. He was nothing like the man Tim had feared and come to respect and befriended. 

“I would get you out of your tower if I could,” Tim said gently, resting his head against Jason's forehead. Jason's skin was so hot it nearly burned his own. 

“That's alright,” Jason said even though it really wasn't. It was the same lie he told Roy. “I have a great view from up here. You know that apple tree where Bruce found me is still out there?” 

Tim laughed. “Really? It must be huge by now.” 

“It was huge then, but I was much smaller,” Jason agreed. “It was all that kept me alive when there was a cold snap early in the fall. The tree still had apples and I would just climb up there and curl up and eat what I could reach.” He paused, lost in the memory of the scent of the fruit and the feel of the shelter of the branches. “Bruce tried to pull me down and I almost poked out his eye with a stick.” Jason grinned. Tim grinned back. 

“He said you were a hard case to win over,” Tim offered, wanting to at least help build the bridge to reunite father and son. 

Jason shrugged. “I wasn't, really. He told me...” He trailed off. Tim tilted his head, prompting. “He told me I wouldn't have to be hungry again,” Jason finished. “And I wasn't.” 

Tim's heart ached enough he thought it might burst, but he was saved by the sound of footsteps approaching Jason's door. Bruce appeared soon after. Oddly, since Bruce usually never made a sound when he walked. “Your father sent a messenger to ask if you might come home,” Bruce told him. “Something about a dinner?”

Tim made a face. For all the plans Bruce might have made for Jason, his own father made worse for him. He stood, impulsively hugging Jason around the shoulders. It might be the last time he saw him, and it was painful to think about. “Don't poke any eyes out,” He advised before giving a deep nod to Bruce. 

\---

Jason was staring at that same apple tree when Dick finally arrived home. “I can see it,” He told his foster brother. Dick never had let Bruce formally adopt him. “It's so strange. I can see all these things I know I'll never touch again. There are the cobblestones where we used to roll glass beads. There's that horse that bites me every time I try to saddle him. There's the roof I fell off trying to copy what you were doing.”

“If I knew you were behind me I wouldn't have been showing off,” Dick protested. He remembered the fall Jason had taken and how long it had taken his broken arm to heal. “I would have caught you if I had seen you.” 

Jason felt that was a very poetic way to describe their relationship. Dick would have been all too willing to save him from a lot if he'd ever noticed Jason was there. 

“Did Bruce tell you the news?” Dick asked and Jason shook his head. After a fight in which Jason had thrown a porridge dish at Bruce's head before vomiting blood, Bruce hadn't been back to his room. “Barbara is expecting a baby in the early summer.” 

It was a good time to have a baby, in Jason's humble opinion. Winter was setting in and it gave the promise of something hopeful for when the weather turned warm and the land turned more forgiving again. “I thought Barbara wanted to wait,” Jason answered breezily, because he remembered her saying something of the sort at their wedding when her own father had all but begged for a grandchild. 

Dick winced. Good. “It was...uh...less than expected,” He admitted, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck and looking a little ashamed. “She really let me have it for it, too. Like I could possibly know the pregnancy charm was faulty.” 

Jason felt a little sympathy for Barbara, but he knew she would be good to any kid of hers. He also knew, grudgingly, that Dick would be a great father. Dick was great to Damian and even affectionate to Tim once he had his head out of his own ass. 

“She's coming to visit you soon. She's just a little slower to get a start in the mornings now.” He paused, clearly uncomfortable. “I know you had a crush on her when you were a kid, Jason. If you think maybe she's your truest love...” 

Jason stopped him. Or, rather, an ill-timed cough stopped him. Jason held up his hand, pounding on his own chest with the other until he could find enough air to breathe. Tim had suggested a good portion of his right lung was dead. He would believe it. “Are you offering me your wife?”

“Just for a kiss! Or for whatever magic you need to try.” 

“The mother of your child?” Jason added. 

“It's not like I'm offering for you to marry her!” Dick argued. “You could just say thank you!”

“For you giving me your wife?” 

Dick threw his hands in the air. “I'm just trying to help. It's not like I'm a mage or a healer. I can't do anything! I ask if anyone's heard of this curse every village we stop in but I'm not like Bruce. I can't throw money and influence around and write a thousand letters to foreign countries promising a fortune for an answer.”

Jason didn't know Bruce was doing that. The look on Dick's face said he shouldn't have mentioned any of what he just said. He sat on the edge of Jason's bed and Jason hated that most of the time he found it difficult to even pull himself to the window. 

“I wish my kid could know you,” Dick told him and it was so sincere that Jason wanted to punch him. It was also the first acknowledgment he'd received that he wouldn't be around by early summer. “You would probably turn them against me and cause all kinds of trouble, but I bet they'd like you.” 

Before Jason realized what he was doing, Dick was pulling him into his arms. He held him firmly in a way that made Jason hurt, and not just from the illness.

“I would have liked them too,” Jason murmured. “As long as they were more like Babs and less like you.” 

“What's this about Babs?” Barbara asked from the doorway. Her eyes seemed a little overly bright, but Jason was used to that too. Enough to ignore it. He shoved Dick away with maybe a little more force than necessary. 

“Dick tried to sell you to me,” He told her. 

“I didn't!” Dick protested again. “I just said that if maybe you might be in love with my wife that I would let you kiss her!”

“You are not helping your case,” Barbara told him. She poured herself a cup of water from the pitcher near the door, then after thinking about it handed the cup to Jason and got another. He drank gratefully, throat dry and raw. As it constantly was. 

“Teach your kid that killer chin-kick,” Jason advised her. “The same one you taught me. And try to have a girl. I want Dick to suffer.” 

“I will do my best,” Barbara promised with a kiss to his forehead. 

\---

The first snow had fallen by the time Damian returned from his studies at the royal court. Jason watched the fat, wet snowflakes drifting down from the sky from flat on his back. Tim had a pot of herbs over the fire, providing a fragrant steam to help him breathe. Alfred, the warden of the castle, had stripped Jason down and bathed him to give him some relief from the fever, but even that hadn't done much. 

Jason wanted to catch snowflakes on his tongue. He wanted to feel the cold sink into his skin. He wanted to throw snowballs at the guards and skate over the frozen pond near the stables. 

Instead, he was trying to focus on Damian who sat near his bed. His vision swam and he wondered if passing out would maybe help his cause. He had another few moths, Tim told him. The worse the illness in him became, the easier it was for the spell to maintain his life. 

“I will not be upset to not have to share my inheritance with you,” Damian informed him. 

“Hate to tell you this in case you orchestrated the whole thing,” Jason gritted out. “But I'm not included in Bruce's inheritance. The law gives it all to you since he actually impregnated your mom.” 

“Tt,” Damian said dismissively. “I was going to split the estate between myself, you, and Grayson. Now I believe I shall take two thirds of it and leave him only one third.” 

It was maybe the funniest thing Jason had heard in days. His fingers twitched as he felt something. Damian's hand, he realized, coming to rest on his own. Damian was a good kid. Headstrong and angry, maybe, but Jason could hardly fault someone for those traits. 

“My grandfather did not know what could break the curse,” Damian admitted quietly. “He has never had to be concerned. His truest love has always been himself.” 

Jason made a noise that might have been a laugh. It would figure that if he were a little more selfish and a little more cruel he might survive this. 

“Damian.” Bruce's voice. Jason tried to sit up at least a little bit. 

“Father,” Damian greeted, standing up. 

“You should be in bed. Asleep.” Damian left without complaint, which Jason found odd. Normally the little prince protested being ordered around, even by his father. How late was it?

Bruce looked at him. His eyes were always cold, always unsettling. But Jason had seen kindness in them, as a child. Jason had seen pride and strength. Jason had seen the human in Lord Wayne and that was what he clung to when he wondered how Bruce could damn him this way. He didn't say anything, didn't make demands to be freed like he once might have. 

It had shattered Bruce's heart when he died. Literally, Tim informed him. Tim had to call people from all corners of the realm to repair it, much as Bruce had done for Jason. It was a favorite tale for performers to spin. Dick had even devoted an act to it in his show. How cold Lord Wayne had his heart broken by his son's murder by the hands of an evil warlock. How the love he had for others and the love he had for them had healed it. 

Jason had taken it, when he first came back, to mean that Bruce had forgotten him. That Bruce's love for him and his love for Bruce had meant nothing. But then he realized that it was the depth of that emotion that had broken Bruce's heart in the first place. 

“Does it hurt?” Bruce queried simply, taking the seat Damian had vacated. 

Jason only sighed. “It hurts,” He confirmed. “A lot. Sometimes when I'm half awake it's alright.” He lived on the idea that tomorrow would be better. He lived on the idea that his truest love was out there and would wake up and realize suddenly where they were supposed to be. He lived on the hope that Tim would find a way to heal him. 

“I have been selfish,” Bruce whispered and Jason wondered for a moment if he hadn't dropped off to sleep again and was dreaming. He fought to turn, fought to look at Bruce straight on. “With you especially, Jason. Even before...before you died. I forced you to go to Court where you did not feel welcome. I had you become a squire when you had no aspirations of knighthood. I betrothed you and got you captured by a pirate queen...” 

Jason fought for a breath. “I didn't like it,” He agreed. “I didn't like what you did. But you tried. More than anyone else.” And it hadn't been all bad. He'd loved learning from the teachers at court. He had a certain aptitude for knighthood and it provided him with adventures with Roy. He even met Kori through that ill thought out marriage attempt. 

Bruce shook his head. Jason hoped he wouldn't have his heart shattered again. Maybe it was self-important to think it might happen from his demise but so many people needed Bruce. “I was selfish in this,” Bruce said, emotion trickling into his voice in a way Jason never had heard it before. “You told me there wouldn't be a cure and I kept you here. I made you linger. I made you suffer and I made you hurt so I wouldn't have to.” 

Jason couldn't answer. He didn't have words. At least, not until he felt Bruce's hands slide underneath him on the bed. He wrapped the blanket firmly around Jason, heaving his weight up and into his arms. The world spun as Bruce stood, Jason carried like a child with his face against his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Do you want to leave this room?” Bruce questioned. It had heavy implications. Jason knew, even delirious as he was, what leaving the room meant. Leaving the room meant death. It meant a quick death, Tim had told him. Time would rush to catch up with those kept in stasis. 

Jason knew it must destroy Bruce. Bruce didn't view it as allowing him to die, Bruce viewed it as failing to keep him alive. Now Bruce was actively helping him. Actively contributing to his own failure. 

“Take me outside,” Jason breathed. “I haven't been outside in so long.” 

For once, Bruce obeyed. Jason lost track of where they were in the castle once he was out of his room. Down the tower steps, he knew, and then he was lost to the pleasant chill of the clasp to Bruce's cloak and how it felt to be carried.

The first gust of winter air made him gasp and Bruce stepped back into the shadow of the castle before Jason shook his head. “No. Keep going.” It felt good. It roused him from the fever-induced stupor and he could actually open his eyes, gazing at the night sky filled with stars. 

He didn't know they were going, but it was enough to be free of the four walls that had confined him for so long. His body ached and his lungs burned and Jason was aware, acutely aware, that he was dying. He remembered what it felt like the first time. At least this way it was a fair bit less painful. 

He was falling. Jason opened his eyes again to see that Bruce was sitting, and above them were tree branches. They had long since lost their leaves but there was something beautiful in their starkness against the sky. 

“The apple tree,” Jason realized. The tree Bruce found him in. The tree he saw every day from his window and thought he would never touch again. To prove himself wrong he reaches, brushes his fingers against the rough bark. 

“Finding you here was one of the best things that ever happened to me,” Bruce told him. Jason's fingers moved to his face, certain the moonlight was playing a trick, but he felt the tears there. It made him choke up, made him ache, made him wish for things that couldn't be. “Now I'm letting you go. I never really did that before. And at least this time I'm here with you.” 

Here with him to die. Jason remembered, too, that as he was being beaten and tortured to death that he had longed for Bruce. That he had called for him and wished, in those last moments, that he could tell Bruce a thousand little things. 

“You were good,” He said. It was inelegant and short, not the sonnet he imagined any of people on their lands could compose to testify to Bruce's virtues. “You were...always good to me. I was glad to be here.” He was crying too, tears freezing on his cheeks nearly as soon as they left his eyes. It wasn't death he was weeping over. It was the things left behind and unsaid. 

The last thing he saw was the spread of the branches of the apple tree. He felt snowflakes falling against his face and Bruce's hand against the back of his head. 

Jason Todd died cradled in his father's as the first rays of dawn touched the wall of his home.

\---

By dawn the next day, everyone had heard of Lord Wayne's loss. There were tales that he let out a terrible cry. That he had ridden out, eager for the blood of the sorcerer who sold him the Lazarus Potion or the evil warlock who had killed his son in the first place. 

Tim knew that Bruce had carried Jason's body back inside and retreated to his study. He didn't take food or drink, and he didn't allow anyone to see him. It was much the same as it had been the first time. 

It shouldn't be that way. Something nagged at Tim. He had nightmares that morning, well after Jason had died. “They are building a pyre in your courtyard,” He told Bruce through the door to his study. 

“Jason wanted to be burned,” Bruce answered. “I'm burning him.” As though it was the most reasonable thing in the world to immolate his son's body when he had been dead not even a day, without even allowing his brothers to pay their respects. 

“I want to see him,” Tim said, then more urgently. “Take me to see him.” 

The door flew open. Tim blinked at Bruce, attired entirely in black. He looked broken, but Tim could see no sign of his heart shattering again. That was a relief. “He is dead, Master Drake,” Bruce said flatly, using his title, and he didn't think he'd ever heard Bruce address him as such. “I don't know what you'll gain by seeing him.” 

“He's my friend,” Tim murmured simply. 

That seemed to work, at least. Bruce swept down the hallway and Tim followed behind at a near trot to keep up. Jason was laid out in a side chamber, dressed simply in the white robe knights preferred to be buried in. Or, at least, the kingdom preferred their knights buried in. Armor was hard enough to come by without burying or burning it. 

Hope soared in Tim's chest as he looked at Jason. There was a spark hovering around him. A spark Tim had not seen at Jason's graveside, and he had taken that as good enough because he did not want to see the bloody pulp the warlock had made of Jason. 

“Kiss him,” Tim ordered Bruce. 

Bruce stared at him and was probably contemplating calling guards to throw him out of the castle at this very moment. 

“Kiss him,” Tim repeated urgently. “Truest love wasn't a person. It was an expression. An act. _You_ performed an act of truest love for him.” 

“He's dead,” Bruce reminded him. “There was no truest love to save him.”

“Obviously,” Tim claimed. “Because you haven't kissed him. Almost all curses involve some type of touch to reverse.” Bruce seemed to have a great aversion to approaching Jason's body. Tim could feel the clock ticking on the amount of time they had before they came to take Jason's body to the fire. “What does it hurt?” He asked. “What will it hurt if I'm wrong?”

It would hurt a lot. It could break Bruce's heart. It could destroy the friendship he had with this family. But it could save Jason all over again. 

Bruce took halting, painful looking steps toward Jason. He leaned over him, hand braced on the table above his head before he leaned over. He looked like he might collapse, or be sick, and Tim hovered nearby as Bruce pressed dry lips to where Jason's dark hair met his forehead. 

Nothing happened, at first. “I let him die,” Bruce confessed. “I carried him outside to help him die. That isn't an act of truest love.” He sounded broken. 

“You let him go,” Tim corrected. “You realized you were keeping him to spare yourself. You did what he wanted you to do. Letting him go was truest love.” 

Which, of course, was when Jason stirred. His fingers twitched first and Tim could barely manage any warning before he jerked up, colliding with Bruce's face. Bruce's nose gave a sickening crack and blood poured out from between his fingers as he covered it with a hand. Tim rushed forward, toward Bruce or toward Jason he didn't know, but he was cut off by the sound of Bruce's muted, bloody laughter. 

“You are not my truest love,” Jason said to him. “Just so we are clear. No one in this room is my truest love.” 

There was a shock of white in his dark hair, right where Bruce had kissed him.


End file.
